


Gifts

by dramatorama



Series: Into Ashes [2]
Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: There is no such thing as a happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-03
Updated: 2015-05-03
Packaged: 2018-03-28 19:50:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3867676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dramatorama/pseuds/dramatorama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There have been so many chances at redemption over the years, all lost to their own peculiar stubbornness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gifts

Yuffie's hair smells of banpeiyu leaves. It's warm for September, and there's a harvest moon dipping low to the horizon over the river and washing it with red. While they were combing her hair, her ladies laughed and sang; such a night, they told her, is the most joyful night to prepare for your wedding. 

She is naked in the dark, sitting lotus-fashion at the open screen that serves as a window to her small house, and wearing the two bracelets that she will don again tomorrow before the journey in the norimono. The Phoenix curls around the whole of her right arm, Leviathan the left, both worked in heavy gold. She turns her forearm to see the moon reflect on the blue lacquered scales, but there isn't enough light, and the weight grinds the bones of her wrist together. She will be carried tomorrow by Gorkii and Staniv to the temple of Leviathan, with Shake and Chekov on either side to carry the trailing hems of her kimono and her father – always her father – preceding her. It has been seventy years since a Kisaragi bride made this journey by palanquin rather than motor-car, but she'd insisted, and her father had bowed to her wishes and her always uneasy stomach. No doubt the groom will think her old-fashioned. 

Tonight, finally, she has had answers from Tifa. They'd come to Yuffie's house by invitation; while Yuffie burned incense for her mother (who should have been there, she should have been there), Cloud stood outside and stared at the river. 

Tifa told her in a few minutes in whispers a story that Yuffie had never cared to listen to very closely. Some gleaned from Nanaki, some from Reeve, and some from Vincent himself. A story about a Turk already old at twenty-seven, and about a man older still who does not think that he can die. There have been so many chances at redemption over the years, all lost to their own peculiar stubbornness. 

Yuffie closes her eyes to the moon behind the treetops. She wants to take Vincent to the church laughing, helmetless, on Cloud's motorcycle. Her stomach will not churn and she will sing with joy. She wants to dump the bike, careless of thieves, and drag him inside by the hand, to pour the water over his head and his chest and down his throat and watch him shudder and shake, watch him coil and uncoil and writhe as the mythril that wracks his bones and clutches his spine forces its way out. The blackness of all that was done to him would seep into the water and be made pure. 

She wants to watch Vincent rest, free of the tension constantly held within him, wants to watch him rise again from the water with a smile waiting to break on his face as he looks at her, the young boy-Turk she's seen on the old training footage that she has watched time and again, looking from her screen to try and find that boy lost in the face of the monster. 

Deepground brought the city crashing down upon Aeris' church two years ago, and the healing water soaked into dust and rubble and was lost to pilgrims. She could have taken him after the Remnants, she could have changed everything; if only he had not chosen to wander the planet and ignore her calls. Now in Midgar, as it is in Wutai, the Lifestream has changed its course and runs silently below a living earth once again. 

Cloud had few words for her. He'd said that there was a good reason Vincent didn't want her calling his phone, but in that way of his, wouldn't say any more. He didn't need to.

She does not think she knows what it is like - to love so deeply, and then, in loss, forget how to love at all. But she remembers that she was five when her father sent her to the nuns, and nine when he sent her to the ninjas, and twelve when he sent her away from Wutai altogether. She thinks she might, at least, understand something of it.

With her eyes still partly closed, she feels a breath of air stir her hair. She takes a slow breath in, and out again, catches a shadow flit into the corner of her vision. It's too dark for moths in here, too quiet for monsters, and that means only one thing. Her throat is dry from the incense. She croaks- 

“It should have been at Aeris' church. Not here.”

Vincent has something in his hand, an offering. He places it in front of her crossed legs, as if in supplication, and he is gone in a streak of colour into the darkness beyond her window. She looks down. It's a Shinra candy, the kind that haven't been made since Meteorfall, wrapped in gaudy foil and shaped like Materia.


End file.
